Wine quotes, ancient and recent, to cheer you up

Greetings of the season: Gott nytt år! Happy New Year. Bonne année. Frohes Neues Jahr. Feliz año nuevo. Buon Anno!

In a couple of previous posts, on Interesting wine quotes from famous people and Quotes from famous people about wine and its role in our lives, I collated six dozen quotations from over the past three millennia. I tried to pick quotes that are cheering. Here I add another three dozen.

• “Hide our ignorance as we will, an evening of wine soon reveals it.” ― Heraclitus (6th century BC)
• “The peoples of the Mediterranean began to emerge from barbarism when they learnt to cultivate the olive and the vine.” ― Thucydides (c.460—c.400 BC)
• “Wine prepares the heart for love, unless you take too much.” ― Publius Ovidius Naso (43 BC—17 AD)
• “the [head] pain ... is contracted ... by drinking wine” ― Aulus Cornelius Celsus (25 BC—50 AD)
• “Either give me more wine or leave me alone.” ― Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (1207—1273)
• “Wine spreads poetry in the hearts.” ― Dante Alighieri (1265—1321)
• “He who loves not women, wine, and song, remains a fool his whole life long.” ― Martin Luther (1483—1546)
• “Whether wine is a nourishment, medicine or poison is a matter of dosage.” ― Paracelsus (Theophrastus Bombastus Von Hohenheim; 1493—1541)
• “Of all things known to mortals, wine is the most powerful and effectual for exciting and inflaming the passions of mankind, being common fuel to them all.” ― Francis Bacon (1561—1626)
• “Good wine is a good familiar creature if it be well used.” ― William Shakespeare (1564—1616) [Othello, Act II, Scene iii]
• “Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same.” ― Blaise Pascal (1623—1662)
• “Wine gives a man nothing … it only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.” ― Samuel Johnson (1709—1784)
• “I think it is a great error to consider a heavy tax on wines as a tax on luxury. On the contrary, it is a tax on the health of our citizens.” ― Thomas Jefferson (1743—1826)
• “A meal without wine is like a day without sun.” ― Jean Anthelme Brillat−Savarin (1755—1826)
• “Clearly, the pleasures wines afford are transitory — but so are those of the ballet, or of a musical performance. Wine is inspiring and adds greatly to the joy of living.” ― Napoleon Bonaparte (1769—1821)
• “A man will be eloquent if you give him good wine.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882)
• “Too much of anything is bad, but too much Champagne is just right.” ― Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens; 1835—1910)
• “A full glass of wine at the proper moment is worth more than all the riches of the world.” ― Gustav Mahler (1860—1911)
• “Champagne is the wine of civilisation … the oil of government.” ― Winston Churchill (1874—1965)
• “His lips drink water but his heart drinks wine.” ― E.E. (Edward Estlin) Cummings (1894—1962)
• “Wine and friends are a great blend.” ― Ernest Hemingway (1899—1961)
• “Anyone who tries to make you believe that he knows all about wines is obviously a fake.” ― Leon Adams (1905—1995)
• “Critics have done the wine industry a lot of good overall.” ― Robert Mondavi (1913—2008)
• “It is widely held that too much wine will dull a man’s desire. Indeed it will, in a dull man.” ― John Osborne (1929—1994)
• “You have only so many bottles in your life; never drink a bad one.” ― Len Evans (1930—2006)
• “My wines make weak men strong, and strong women weak.” ― Wolfgang Blass (1934— )
• “A gourmet meal without a glass of wine just seems tragic to me somehow.” ― Kathy Matteas (1959— )
• “We live in an age of beautifully packaged wines with superbly exaggerated stories and prices.” ― Andrew Caillard (1959— )
• “Men are like a fine wine. They all start out like grapes, and it’s our job to stomp on them and keep them in the dark until they mature into something you’d like to have dinner with.” ― Jill Shalvis (1963— )
• “I always love being in the company of women. It’s all about good conversation and great wine.” ― Naomi Watts (1968— )
• “Every time I open a bottle of wine, it is an amazing trip somewhere.” ― José Andrés (1969— )
• “Next time you drink a glass of champagne, remember that it is essentially a faulty wine from an unpromising place, made great by the genius of man.” ― Neel Burton (1978— )
  
• “Champagne is appropriate for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.” ― Madeline Puckette (1984— )
• “Jazz is like wine. When it is new, it is only for the experts, but when it gets older, everybody wants it.” ― Steve Lacy (1998— )
• “A meal without wine is called Breakfast.” ― Anonymous
• “After the rain the grass will grow; after wine, conversation.” ― Swedish proverb

There is one diet that actually recommends wine

Greetings of the season:
God jul! Merry Christmas. Joyeux noël. Fröhe Weihnachten. Feliz Navidad. Buon Natale!

My wife spent the Monday before last in a hospital, being examined some of the time, but mostly just sitting there waiting (I kept her company). I then did exactly the same thing myself on the Tuesday (and she accompanied me). In my wife’s case they said: “It will be okay”; and we hope that they are right. In my case they gave me some pills to take 3 times per day, every day for the rest of my life. These are the outcomes of getting older (we are in our mid-60s) — back in the old days people didn’t make it, to get any older, but these days we slowly undergo physical and mental degeneration for quite a long while.

In this regard, old age is acknowledged to be a time when you have to care most about your diet. So, it matters to my wife and I what diet we follow, especially with regard to our mental health. One that is sometimes recommended is the so-called MIND diet, especially with regard to our brains and their continued functioning. I will discuss this diet here, because it specifically includes wine as one of the recommended components. Furthermore, recent scientific studies have suggested that this diet really can work.

The MIND diet is apparently designed to reduce the risk of dementia and loss of brain function as we age. “MIND” apparently stands for “Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay.” It combines the Mediterranean diet and the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet, to create a dietary pattern that focuses specifically on brain health.

You can usefully read about it here:

The MIND Diet: A detailed guide for beginners

or here:

The MIND Diet: Meal plans, reviews and tips for 2024.

There are 10 brain-healthy foods that the MIND diet encourages (green leafy vegetables, other vegetables, nuts, berries, beans, whole grains, fish, poultry, olive oil, and wine) and 5 unhealthy foods that the diet discourages (red meats, butter and stick margarine, cheese, pastries and sweets, and fried/fast food).

Note the presence of wine in that list (but not beer or spirits!). This comes from the Mediterranean diet (Research shows wine enhances the impact of the Mediterranean diet). This web page notes:

Wine: Aim for no more than one glass daily. Both red and white wine may benefit your brain. While there has been much interest in the compound resveratrol, which is found in red wine, recent research has questioned whether it has clear benefits in humans.

There have been a number of scientific studies of the MIND diet; for example:

• MIND diet slows cognitive decline with aging (in the journal Alzheimer's & Dementia)
• Association of MIND diet with cognitive decline among Black and White older adults (in the journal Alzheimer's & Dementia)

You can read a summary of this work here: MIND diet slows cognitive decline in older adults, but effects vary by race. This web page notes:

We found that the MIND diet may prevent cognitive decline with aging in both non-Hispanic White and Black older adults. We found that adding one MIND diet-recommended component or limiting any unhealthy component resulted in a rate reduction of cognitive decline equivalent to being two years younger in age.

However, the relationship between diet and cognitive function was not uniform across racial groups. Among White participants, moderate adherence to the diet — scoring around 7 out of 15 on the MIND diet scale — was sufficient to observe cognitive benefits. In contrast, Black participants needed stricter adherence, scoring at least 8.5, to experience similar effects.

As an aside, I will point out that there are apparently also 6 beers good for your gut health according to experts. Moreover, there are, of course, other articles about alcohol and health that are much more moderate than the increasingly extreme ones from official sources that should know better. These include:

• What the headlines get wrong about alcohol and health
• Wine, health and moderation.

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People sometimes seem to wonder what an author of a blog like this might eat and drink. So, here is the special dinner that my wife and I ate the other day (note that it does not adhere strictly to the MIND diet — our usual meals are much closer):

• Mussels (with onion, garlic, white wine)
• Halibut, oven-cooked, in a white wine sauce (shallot onion, butter, white wine, fish stock cube, cream, salt, pepper), plus potatoes [no greenery — should have had spinach]
• Saffron buns (with almond paste and cardamom) = Saffransbullar, a traditional Swedish treat at this time of year
• Tim Adams Clare Valley Reserve Riesling 2008, hoarded for the previous decade and a half [one bottle between two people, so more than one glass each]
• Yalumba Antique Muscat (Eden Valley) [small glass each]

IQ and well-being scores for the USA

Last week I wrote about Intelligence and its association with alcohol problems, which is a topic that I bet hardly any of you have ever thought about. Well, other people have thought about it, and that includes various groups within the U.S.A. I will look at one of those people here, who is interested in our well-being and health, and how it connects with our IQ.

Now, an Intelligence Quotient (IQ) is a controversial and complex measure of human intelligence. It is a total score derived from a set of standardized tests or subtests designed to objectively assess our intelligence. Explaining further (IQ and health: exploring the intricate connection between intelligence and well-being):

Intelligence Quotient, or IQ, is not just a single, static number that defines our mental capabilities. Rather, it’s a complex measure that encompasses various cognitive skills, including logical reasoning, problem-solving abilities, and spatial awareness. Think of it as a Swiss Army knife for your brain — a versatile tool with multiple functions that can be applied to various aspects of life, including our health.

The person interested in IQ and health works at: the Department of Management, at Cleveland State University. A couple of years ago (2022) he published a list called: Updated IQ and well-being scores for the 50 U.S. states. The author notes:

At the level of the 50 U.S. states, an interconnected nexus of well-being variables exists. These variables strongly correlate with estimates of state IQ in interesting ways. However, the state IQ estimates are now more than 16 years old, and the state well-being estimates are over 12 years old. Updated state IQ and well-being estimates are therefore needed.

So, some new data were obtained:

Thus, I first created new state IQ estimates by analyzing scores from both the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competency (for adults), and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (for fourth and eighth grade children) exams. I also created new global well-being scores by analyzing state variables from the following four well-being subdomains: crime, income, health, and education.

The new data were produced at the level of the state (ie. an average score for each state), and they are shown in the first table, above. IQ is scaled so that the overall average for humans is 100. As you can see, both Ohio and Maryland are therefore “average”, and 23 states are higher and 25 are lower. You can make what you will about the scores for New Mexico, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Nevada.

Moving on, the author was interested in the relationships with health, which he studied using statistical correlations. Correlations between two given characteristics go from –1, which represents perfectly opposite patterns in those two characteristics, to +1, which represents perfectly corresponding patterns. The author notes:

When validating the nexus, several interesting correlations existed among the variables. For example, state IQ most strongly predicted FICO credit scores, alcohol consumption (directly), income inequality, and state temperature.

However, in this blog we are interested in alcohol. The correlations for alcohol are shown in the second table, below. All of the patterns in the table are “statistically significant” except Income Inequality, so that is the only one we can ignore.

Interestingly, alcohol has a positive correlation with IQ, indicating that states with a high IQ also have high alcohol consumption. Similarly, states with a high alcohol consumption also have a high Well-being. Such states also tend to have a high FICO credit score, and to be COVID vaccinated. Readers of this blog should be happy about all of these things!

On the other hand, alcohol has a negative correlation with both Conservatism and Religiosity, indicating that states with high alcohol consumption tend to be neither conservative nor religious. This is perhaps not surprising.

Obviously, not every American has done IQ tests, and could thus appear in this dataset. Indeed, some of my American correspondents claim to have never taken an IQ test, whereas others recall doing them in (for example) the fourth grade. I, myself, have not done any since I left school.

The concept of a unitary or general intelligence (ie. IQ) has been controversial since its introduction in the early 1900s. Indeed, there are a variety of individually administered IQ tests in use in the English-speaking world (see Wikipedia). You can make of them what you will, in terms of their reliability and validity.

As a final note, I can say that there is a study from 2013 (IQ and alcohol consumption: international data) that looked at IQ at the national level (ie. an average IQ for each country), and noted:

Using Lynn and Meisenberg's (2010) national IQ as a proxy for cognitive development we find that in countries with higher levels of intelligence the average individual is more likely to consume more beer and wine, even after controlling for income, health, urbanization and religious traditions.

So, the alcohol and IQ correlation exists at the national as well as the state level. I take this to mean that it is a general phenomenon among people.

Intelligence and its association with alcohol problems

Many people are not subjected to Intelligence Quotient (IQ) tests when they are at high school; but students of my generation (the 1970s) in Australia were. This mattered a lot to me at the time, so I know what a stress it can be. It is therefore of interest as to whether one’s ability, as assessed at that time, does matter in later life — after all, the tests are done because IQ is claimed to be a strong predictor of various life outcomes, such as education, income and health.

High school success, as determined by exam results for instance, can matter a lot to your early life; for example if you want to get in to university (as I did). However, IQ is a somewhat different thing. Having a high IQ does not necessarily mean that you will do well at exams, as exams require a particular technique in order to succeed, and this technique can be learned, irrespective of whether you have a high IQ.

Now, clearly, “intelligence” has a rather abstract nature; and therefore IQ is a somewhat nebulous concept. [It is discussed further below.] Nevertheless, we can proceed with it in this post — recently, a study was published about the relationship between IQ as assessed when young and alcohol consumption much later in life; and I will discuss this here.

The study at hand is from the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism):

IQ in high school as a predictor of midlife alcohol drinking patterns

The report notes:

[Study group]: Study data were from 6,300 men and women who participated in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) of high-school students graduating in 1957. IQ scores were collected during the participants’ senior year of high school. In 2004, participants reported the number of alcoholic beverages consumed (past 30 days) and the number of binge-drinking episodes.

[Results]: Every one-point increase in IQ score was associated with a 1.6% increase in the likelihood of reporting moderate or heavy drinking as compared to abstinence. Those with higher IQ scores also had significantly fewer binge-drinking episodes. Household income, but not education, partially mediated the relationship between IQ and drinking pattern.

The authors do not offer any form of explanation for their observation — they simply present their results as an important form of forecasting an older behavior from a younger characteristic.

Now, I do not actually question the conclusion here. However, I do note that this is not a proper scientific experiment, in the sense that an opportunity was simply taken to collect some data from a group of people:

The initial purpose of the WLS was to gauge the intentions and aspirations of graduating Wisconsin high-school seniors (n = 10,317) regarding their level of post-high-school education, career, and relationships. During the students’ senior year in high school, participants were asked to provide information about the emotional and financial support available to them in pursuit of these goals ... The 90-item, 30-minute Henmon-Nelson Test of Mental Ability was administered to measure spatial, verbal, and mathematical intelligence.

In 1992, an alcohol use module was added to the WLS and administered to a random 80% sample of the original cohort (n = 8,254), which asked participants about the number of drinks consumed, and the number of times having consumed five or more drinks on one occasion, in the prior 30 days. Participants included in the current study were those from the random 80% sample that responded to alcohol use questions during the 2004 measurement wave (n = 6,300), had complete outcomes data, and reported no history of liver disease.

So, an opportunity was taken to collect the IQ data and another opportunity was taken to collect the alcohol data. Furthermore, only those people who responded were included, and there may be some particular reasons why the other people did not respond. The people sampled are also not necessarily representative of most people:

Participants almost exclusively identified as non-Hispanic White and were all born between 1938 and 1940.

As a professional scientist I recognize that this is not the best situation, but it is often the best that can be done in the social sciences (ie. working with humans).

So, what do we make of this? The authors conclude:

As IQ increases, one has a higher likelihood of being either a moderate or heavy drinker as opposed to an abstainer ... Men also had a higher likelihood than women of being either a moderate drinker or heavy drinker relative to being an abstainer ... Income, but not education, was a partial mediator of this relationship.

The data look like this, regarding the number of people in the different groups:
                    Study sample       Abstainer         Moderate          Heavy
    Male        2,912 (46.2%)       724 (24.9%)    1,948 (66.9%)    240 (8.2%)
    Female    3,388 (53.8%)    1,159 (34.2%)    2,004 (59.1%)    225 (6.6%)
That is, a quarter of the men were abstainers and two-thirds were moderate drinkers, and a third of the women were abstainers while three-fifths were moderate drinkers. The gender bias of the participants is not ideal.

Furthermore, the IQ test used may also not be the best. The Henmon-Nelson Test had a major revision in 1961 (4 years after the WLS, when the participants would have left college), and it is reported to now be “a much better measure of general scholastic ability than earlier versions” (Test reviews).

This study was reported in Psychopharmacology, a news aggregation site (High school IQ predicts alcohol use patterns in midlife, study finds), as well as in ScienceAlert (Your IQ in high school can predict your alcohol use later in life). They do not question the study; and you can read their summaries if you do not want to read the original paper.

Health and its relation to intelligence has been a popular topic. It is discussed further in IQ and health: exploring the intricate connection between intelligence and well-being. In particular, these authors note:

Intelligence Quotient, or IQ, is not just a single, static number that defines our mental capabilities. Rather, it’s a complex measure that encompasses various cognitive skills, including logical reasoning, problem-solving abilities, and spatial awareness. Think of it as a Swiss Army knife for your brain — a versatile tool with multiple functions that can be applied to various aspects of life, including our health.

So, there are lots of other research papers to consult. For example:

• Associations between IQ and alcohol consumption in a population of young males: a large database analysis
• Links between adolescent binge drinking and midlife alcohol use behaviors by age, sex, and race/ethnicity
• Intelligence in youth and health at age 50

Sweden is not actually restricted to a government alcohol retail monopoly

Last week I reported on the obtainability of wine in Sweden (The availability of wines in government-owned retail monopolies). I noted that, for a population of 10 million people, it is actually quite a good selection, even though it is accessible only through a single government-owned retail monopoly (called Systembolaget).

This week, I discuss the fact that beer is a completely different thing:

 In Sweden, beer is freely available in supermarkets!

This topic is worth reviewing, even though this is nominally a wine blog.

The basic point here is that Sweden distinguishes between low-alcohol and high-alcohol drinks, and high-alcohol drinks can be sold only through Systembolaget. Low-alcohol beer (up to and including 3.5%), on the other hand, can be sold through supermarkets (livsmedelbutiker).

This situation has existed on and off for nearly a century, because Sweden has traditionally been a beer country, as well as a spirits-drinking country. It is the latter (spirits) that was being addressed by the creation of Systembolaget, as I discussed in last week's post.

Sweden basically recognizes four types of beer, based on alcohol content by volume (Beer in Sweden):
    Light beer (lättöl)          <2.25%
    Folk beer (folköl)           2.25—3.5%
    Medium beer (mellanöl) 3.5—4.5%
    Strong beer (starköl)      >4.5%
Up to and including Folk beer can be sold in food shops, but Medium and Strong beer can be sold only through Systembolaget.

So, it is Mellanöl that has been the topic at issue for the government. The original plan was to get the people off the spirits and onto Medium beer, instead. So, they allowed it to be sold in food shops (The rise and fall of medium beer):

The introduction of middle beer in the 1960s is connected with the return of strong beer in 1955. Strong beer had been banned since 1923. During the entire counter-book period when alcohol was rationed in Sweden, it was basically only possible to get hold of strong beer at a pharmacy if you had a doctor's prescription. Otherwise, it was pilsner with roughly the same alcohol strength as today's Folk beer.

Medium beer had a stormy and short career in the Swedish grocery stores 1965–1977. The idea was that it would make the Swedes more sober; but instead it came to be associated with problems and drunkenness. The Medium beer got its own tax class, class IIB, which was beer with an alcohol content between 3.5 and 4.5 percent by volume. After the Medium beer ban, all beer over 3.5% by volume was classified as Strong beer.

So, the current situation is that anything up to and including 3.5% alcohol can be sold in the supermarkets. To illustrate this situation, I manually went through the online catalog of my local supermarket (ICA) to create a list, and supplemented it by scanning the shelves. The resulting summary is shown in the above table. There are at least 90 different beers, with the majority at either 0.0% (alkoholfri) or 3.5% (folköl) alcohol by volume.

This is not too shabby; and remember this represents only one supermarket chain — there are two other large ones (Coop; City Gross) that will have somewhat different selections. However, most of the beers are not all that exciting — they are beers for the masses, not the connoisseurs. For this, we must turn to Systembolaget.

So, I have also gone through their online catalog (Systembolaget), as I did last week for wine. The resulting summary is shown in the table above. This is much better! There are 4,243 alcohol-containing beers and 58 alcohol-free beers; and Swedes clearly prefer their ales and lagers, as you can see. The alcohol content can get pretty high, for beers (max 17.2%), making most of the styles Strong beers (as defined above).

Most of the beers are produced in Sweden, as shown in the table below for the eight most-productive countries. Belgium, Great Britain, the United States and Germany also provide quite a few, for a market of <10 million people.

Interestingly, there are, indeed, some specialist beers among the crowd. As but one example, there are beers with specified years of production, dating back to 2015 (2 beers), 2016 (3), 2017 (1), 2018 (5), 2019 (2) and 2020 (5). Sweden is responsible for 9 of these beers, Belgium 5, Denmark 3, and the USA 1 (as shown in the picture below).

How long this situation will continue is not clear. There are, for example, repeated proposals to the government to allow wine to also be sold in supermarkets (eg. 2015, 2023). After all, Sweden is part of the European Union, and so we can freely bring stuff in from there, not the least being alcoholic beverages. What is the point of the local government being restrictive?

There is also the recently expressed opinion that even alcohol-free beer is not a sign of societal progress (Alcohol-free beer hype is unhelpful). Tom Wark rightly has a go at this idea (First they came for alcohol...now they come for non-alcohol). Mind you, it has also been reported that Beer-only drinkers’ diets are worse than wine drinkers. Take note!

In the meantime, like all Swedes, I am currently stocking up on my specially brewed Christmas beers, both alcohol-free and otherwise, along with glögg and julmust. This is, indeed, a joyous time!